Time for a grown-up abortion debate
Pro-choice and pro-life campaigners have been ramping up their campaigns lately. But there’s no use in Ireland burying its collective head in the sand any longer. With women continuing to travel abroad for terminations, the time has come for the status quo to be challenged.
Adrienne Murphy, 05 Oct 2012
An online medical abortion service that refers clients to a licensed doctor, WoW helps women around the world who are denied access to safe legal abortion in their own countries, by delivering safe medical abortion in the form of mifepristone and misoprostal – abortion pills that have become widely available in the last decade – to postal addresses specified by clients. The pills, which are statistically very safe and highly effective, only work up to the ninth week of pregnancy.
“After you complete an online consultation, if there are no contraindications, the medical abortion will be delivered to you,” the WoW website explains. “A medical abortion can be done safely at home so long as you have good information and have access to emergency medical care in the rare cases where there are complications.”
WoW is an international digital community of women who have had abortions, and individuals and organisations that support abortion rights. (It is common for women who have had to struggle to access abortion to volunteer to help others in the same predicament; a friend of mine, for example, used to escort Irish women travelling alone to England for abortions, having been through the experience herself.)
“WoW answers thousands of emails a day in many languages from women around the world,” reads the website. “As WoW helps women in very many countries, there is no phone number to the helpdesk, but the organisation promises to respond to every email and will support you. You can count on us!”
While WoW is a non-profit organisation, it requests a minimum of €90 donation from women who can afford it. “The donation is part of a chain of solidarity needed to keep the website online and to ensure that other women can also be supported. If you can donate more than €90, you will help us to provide the service to women who cannot donate the full €90 . If your economic situation is particularly difficult, please contact us: together we will try to find a way to help you.”
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Adrienne Murphy
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